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Pascal S
·I have already posted this pic in WRUW but figure it might as well have its place here…
The “story” around this watch is pretty straightforward: I’m not a huge fan (or at least I thought I wasn’t…) of small, hand-wound, plexi-wearing vintage chronos. More drawn to Speedmaster Mk2, Autavias, Montreals and the like…
And yet I felt a semi-itch for one (1)861-powered chrono - just not that overly common Moonwatch. A friend had once shown a Heuer Carrera 5100 to me, which had kind of put Lemania “on my radar”. So, once every blue moon, I would screen local classified ads for that keyword.
When this 9655 came up, OF - and particular @Northernman - was pretty much the only source to confirm authenticity and I thought that the historical context around this model, its Seamaster cousins and the SSIH morphing into the Swatch Group made for a cool additional story, on top of the nice design.
Bottom-line: I won the auction w/o too much fighting, invested 3h of driving one evening after work, and retrieved the watch from its OG owner. The gentleman was formerly a service watchmaker with Omega and had picked this one up directly at the Lemania workshop when he had spent time in the Vallée de Joux.
However, he never wore the watch and it has spent the last 40+ years in a drawer. He has changed the caseback seal a while ago, but that’s the only intervention he deemed necessary. As a result, I’m the first person to wear this watch, which keeps time within -2 or -3 seconds per day. I’ll try to ask the local Omega boutique some day whether they can put it on their timegrapher (since 1873 = 861), but it looks like there’s no urgency.
Give it the wrist love it deserves.
